NECC Day 3: 10 Minutes Behind
I was 10 minutes behind all day. Might have something to do with a late night at a bar called “Madam’s Organ” (a riff on “Adams Morgan, get it?) the night before…
In light of some pretty disappointing workshops on Monday, my strategy was to stick to the rock stars: Gary Stager, Ian Jukes. I figured you always take something away from these sessions. Turns out that Jukes’ father passed away last week so his partner, Lee Crockett gave the talk, instead. A very polished but somewhat obvious plea for the addition of new literacies in the curriculum. Stager was Stager: provocative, funny, obstreperous. He ended with an exploration of the differences between communities and communities of practice. He made some interesting points about entry into a community of practice, how a “newbie” has to pay his dues by imitating the masters. I think he managed to defend connectivist learning while answering those who argue that students can’t just walk into the middle of an academic debate and start talking/posting/uploading.
On the show floor, I spent a lot of time talking to vendors of video streaming solutions for K-12, subscription sites where students and teachers can upload videos and other media and share them out to other members of the school community. We need this, as I’m sure lots of other districts do: a “walled garden” where you can safely place video and other media for easy sharing among students, parents, and staff. I was already familiar with Discovery MediaShare; yesterday I explored WebFTC and Kaltura. The latter, in particular, looks impressive. I was also impressed by Mahara, an open-source ePortfolio solution.
Just finished a teacher center class on wikis this afternoon, only to stumble across 
